Tag: Environmentalism

MLLG

A Tale of Two States: New York and Florida

George Noga

New York spends $6,400 (125%) more per person than Florida – and for what?

A Tale of Two States: New York and Florida

By: George Noga – March 26, 2023

Refugees are fleeing en masse from NY to FL, and it is easy to see why. The mystery is why everyone doesn’t. Let’s begin with some numbers which reveal much (but definitely not all) of the calculus for bolting from NY. A resident of Miami pays no (as in zip, zero, nada) state or local income tax, while denizens of the big apple pay 14.8%. New Yorkers pay 8.875% in sales tax versus 6% in Miami. Florida’s constitution caps residential real estate taxes which generally hover around only 1% of value.

The NY budget calls for spending $227 billion ($11,500 per resident); the FL budget contains spending of $115 billion ($5,100 per capita). NY spends twice as much as FL even though FL has 2.5 million more people. Florida’s economy is growing at twice the rate of NY and its unemployment rate is half that of NY. Estate taxes in NY are 16%, while FL has no state inheritance or estate tax. And a moving van costs 500% more in NY. But there is much more to the story than is revealed by the numbers alone.

New York is where safety, civility, culture and liberty go to die.

Paying double in taxes might be okay if NY was a Garden of Eden and its sky-high taxes resulted in la dolce vita for its inhabitants. However, New York has toxic governance based on identity politics, Kafkaesque regulation, stratospheric living costs, mandatory unionization and crumbling infrastructure. Its failed government schools are run by unions and are petri dishes for dysfunction and social pathologies. Crime is rampant while gun control is uber-strict. There is massive public debt, unfunded liabilities and tanking credit ratings. NY bollixed the pandemic response and, in obeisance to teachers’ unions, shuttered schools for years causing irreparable harm.

New York is a woke sanctuary state that tolerates homelessness, open drug use and human filth. NY decriminalizes arson, looting and shoplifting, while defunding police and eliminating cash bail. NY pits people against each other based on race, income, age, ethnicity and gender. NY’s stagnating economy hemorrhages its most productive citizens. NY schools teach the 1619 Project, CRT and encourage young children to question their gender without parental involvement. Housing is scarce, dilapidated and costly with rent control and eviction bans. Environmentalism run amok doubles the cost of energy. New York is where safety, civility, culture and liberty go to die.

Each and every one of the horrors of life in New York listed above is non-existent in the free state of Florida. Will the last person to leave NY kindly turn off the lights?

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More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us

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Real Doctors Versus Witch Doctors

George Noga

Progressivism drowns everyone in an endless sea of myths, banalities and outright lies.

Real Doctors Versus Witch Doctors

By: George Noga – February 28, 2021

The most disturbing trend in America today is the rapidly escalating number and gravity of disconnects between empirical reality and political correctness – between objective fact and logic on the one hand and vapid progressivism on the other.

I feel like a real doctor amidst a coven of witch doctors. I approach issues in a fact-based, logical manner; they screech truth-defying progressive mantras in unison like imps and banshees, believing the more often and louder they regurgitate their pallid screeds makes them truthful. I advocate principled solutions to public policy issues; they shriek socialistic incantations and prescribe antiscience remedies like applying leeches, bleeding and administering arsenic to bring the humours into balance.

As we begin the third decade of the twenty-first century, a cornucopia of marvels, thanks to free market capitalism, confronts us. Space flight is commonplace, medicine routinely performs miracles and technology brings us mind-boggling gadgets. Every measure of human well-being is the best it has been and is getting better all the time. Similarly, environmental metrics are the best in about 100 years and getting better.

Breathtaking social progress has been made in my lifetime. The status of women, minorities, LGTBQs and even animals has been elevated and virtually all vestiges of discrimination eliminated. The few racists that still exist are regarded by the rest of us as troglodytes; all of them could comfortably fit inside a high school gymnasium. Extreme poverty is nearly eliminated worldwide; in the US material poverty is reduced to 2%-3% of the population and exists mainly among those with cognitive disabilities, untreated mental illness and substance abuse. Food is so cheap the age old paradigm of the affluent being corpulent while the poor are gaunt has been reversed.

Progressivism is twenty-first century witchcraft

Amidst this horn of plenty there is one dismal creed that is seeking to reverse all the aforementioned miracles. That is progressivism and the misanthropic stepchildren it has spawned and midwifed. It goes by many names: ANTIFA, political correctness, BLM, environmentalism and democratic socialism. It brands its opponents heretics and seeks to control their speech just as Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. It drowns everyone in an endless sea of myths, irrelevances, banalities, inanities and outright lies. Progressivism is a dark force that panders to the lesser angels of our nature.

Progressives have long sought to implement their agenda through government. They already control public schools, universities, entertainment, labor unions and the media. They are taking over corporations, social media, technology companies, sports and even science. These dark forces are metastasizing worse than kudzu and with the same effect. They now may be able to achieve their goals without government.

Witchcraft is defined as “the exercise or invocation of alleged magical powers to control people or events.” BINGO! Progressivism is simply twenty-first century witchcraft – not unlike that of the Middle Ages. Witchcraft may work for a time but eventually people quit believing – when progressives’ “magic” time after time proves to be ineffective and destructive. Until such time arrives, MLLG will continue to present fact-based, principled analysis and prescriptions that work – like a real doctor.

Next on March 7th is our retrospective on the Trump presidency.
More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us

50th Anniversary of Earth Day – The Environmentalist Playbook

George Noga

The ersatz existential environmental crisis that led to the original Earth Day

 

50th Anniversary of Earth Day

The Environmentalist Playbook

By: George Noga – April 19, 2020

        The incredible, but 100% true, story described in this post is about the advent of the environmental movement and how it led to the first Earth Day; moreover, it resulted in a playbook environmentalists have used over and over ever since that time. This is the fourth in our series on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day; the previous parts are on our website: www.mllg.us. The final part is next week.

 

        In the mid 1960s an existential environmental crisis threatened Earth; lakes, rivers and forests were dying. Scientists were certain they identified the cause and that it was man-made. Nascent environmentalists became alarmed and organized for action. Politicians quickly fell into line. International conferences, including at the United Nations, were convened and a war on coal (the putative cause) was declared.

       Public alarm was intense; in Sweden and Germany hysteria reached fever pitch. The media outdid themselves with hyperbole, sensationally asserting that the planet was dying. The National Academy of Sciences and the EPA said that the evidence of its cause was overwhelming. The President of the United States formed a blue-ribbon scientific working group to study the problem. International protocols were signed. When the next US president expressed skepticism, 3,000 scientists protested. Cap and trade legislation was pending in Congress. Then came a huge bombshell!

Every environmental scare since 1970 followed the same playbook.

       The blue-ribbon scientific working group (National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program or NAPAP) found that the science was mostly wrong. The principal cause of the problem was changes in land use which resulted in calcium depletion in the soil which, in turn, vastly reduced the acidity of forest floors. The emissions from burning coal in power plants was not the principal cause. Based on the NAPAP report, the problem was rectified and the planet saved. To this day, the EPA never has admitted it was wrong and it still clings to the discredited zombie science of coal emissions.

       As you undoubtedly have discerned by now, the preceding story was about acid rain. Although coal emissions as a principal cause of acid rain has been debunked, it provided a dress rehearsal and a template that environmentalists would use over and over again. They used it for global cooling and the coming of the new ice age in the 1970s. This was followed by global warming in the 1980s which morphed into today’s climate change. But it all began with the environmentalists’ acid rain dry run.

The Environmentalist Playbook

        Every environmental scare since the 1960s has used the same playbook. First, an existential threat to the planet is conjured. Scientists, funded by government, study the problem and claim to be absolutely certain they identified the cause; anyone who disagrees is branded a denier or even a heretic. International organizations jump onto the bandwagon and issue politically motivated studies and protocols. The media then glom onto the crisis and sensationalize it with apocalyptic headlines.

     The public, especially impressionable school children, panics. Politicians, not wanting to allow any crisis go to waste, use it as a pretext to demand more power and money and to further their other not-so-hidden agendas. And, of course, so-called environmentalists never will admit of having doubt or entertain the notion that they might be wrong and if proven wrong they continue to deny the facts.

      There is one other common feature of the environmentalist playbook: they are proven wrong. They were wrong about the cause of acid rain. They were spectacularly wrong about global cooling and the coming of a new ice age. The final story is not yet written about climate change but, at a minimum, the environmentalists have grossly exaggerated the significance of the anthropogenic component.

        On this golden anniversary of the environmental movement, take a few moments to reflect on the playbook environmental alarmists first learned with acid rain and have used for the last 50 years. Now that you understand their game plan, you shouldn’t be vulnerable to manipulation by pseudo environmentalists peddling junk science.

Next on April 26th, we present our plan for the environment for the next 50 years.  
More Liberty Less Government  –  mllg@mllg.us  –  www.mllg.us

Half Century of Earth Day: 1970 to 2020

George Noga

Watermelon environmentalists are green on the outside but red on the inside. 

 

Half Century of Earth Day: 1970 to 2020

By: George Noga – March 29, 2020

          We observe the golden anniversary of Earth Day on April 22, 2020 with a month-long series about the environment. Today’s post, the first in the series, articulates our beliefs about the environment. The remaining posts in this series are:

Predictions made on the original Earth Day (April 5)

The environmental religion (April 12)

The environmentalist playbook (April 19)

It’s getting better all the time (April 26)

MLLG Statement of Beliefs About the Environment

In 1970 the environmental movement, like other seismic movements of our era, began in response to legitimate concerns. People of good will joined together to raise consciousness and to enact laws. They achieved great success as most problems were solved or vastly improved. Nonetheless, some serious problems, such as ocean plastics pollution, remain albeit caused by China, India and third-world countries. Most people, believing their mission accomplished, moved on. At that point, hard core leftists hijacked the environmental movement as a lever to achieve their other goals.

 

Today the environmental movement is led by watermelon (green on the outside but red on the inside) poseurs. They are supported by the usual gaggle of useful idiots: college professors, big government acolytes, movie stars, religious leaders, teachers, media elites and progressives. Unfortunately, they also have captured the hearts and minds of many of our children and grandchildren. Moreover, it isn’t just our children; too many of us still are beguiled by green Svengalis peddling fairy tales.

Hard core leftists have hijacked the environmental movement.

MLLG doesn’t take a back seat to anyone about protecting the environment. We support laws and regulations for clean air, water and energy. We favor biodiversity, sustainability, saving rainforests and right on down the line. There are three differences between MLLG and those who claim (usurp) the mantle of environmentalism.

 

First – we are for free market capitalism, free trade and limited government. For any nation to spend serious money improving the environment, it must be wealthy. The path to wealth lies only through capitalism. The worst environmental disaster in history was the former Soviet Union and its satellites. Clueless former commies, just like those who created environmental Armageddon, are now leading the green movement.

 

Second – our beliefs are based on empiricism and science – not on dogma. Green extremists clamor for ever more costly laws to achieve ever more infinitesimal putative benefits. Many greens have turned into environmental terrorists – opposing any and all infrastructure projects. They oppose relatively safe pipelines even if it results in oil moving by rail, which poses far greater environmental risks. Their dogma opposes nuclear energy although it is an environmentally friendly source of energy.

 

Third – when human wellbeing is at stake, we support rational trade offs. For example, we would allocate water to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley instead of to the delta smelt. Our calculus favors humans whenever the benefit to the environment is uncertain or minimal and the cost and suffering to humans is prodigious.

 

We are staunch environmentalists whose ideas will do more to help both people and the environment than those of green extremists. Our beliefs are based on capitalism, science, cost-benefit analysis and human values; their beliefs are based on socialism, dogma, unlimited spending and are antithetical to human values.

Next on April 5th, we examine predictions made on the very first Earth Day.
More Liberty Less Government  –  mllg@mllg.us  –  www.mllg.us

Earth Day 2019: Print This Email!

George Noga
Fight back against paternalistic, proselytizing, political preening.
Earth Day 2019: Print This Email!
By: George Noga – April 21, 2019

        “Please consider the environment before printing this email” is a common liberal animadversion appended to personal and business emails; it is wrong for four reasons: (1) it gratuitously injects politics into a non political situation; (2) the sender is clueless that it is a divisive political statement; (3) it is virtue signaling; and (4) it is factually wrong as printing does not harm the environment, but actually helps save our forests.

      Progressives would (rightfully) take umbrage if emails were appended with: “Please consider adoption before abortion”. It is even worse when businesses make political statements. Why would businesses, which would not deign to hector you about contentious political issues, arrogantly foist their ersatz environmental views about paper products on customers? You can and should push back. When I receive an offending personal email, I attach the following subscript to my reply.

         Please print this email. Trees are a farmed product grown expressly for paper. It makes no more sense to conserve paper to save trees than it makes to conserve cloth to save cotton. Paper is natural, biodegradable, organic, renewable and sustainable. Working forests employ millions of Americans and help the environment by providing clean air and water, wildlife habitat and carbon storage. There are more trees planted commercially each year than are consumed; there are more trees than 100 years ago. Failure to print hastens the conversion of forests into strip malls and parking lots.

         When I receive an offending business email, I append the preceding paragraph but also let them know that I resent their presumptive and unwanted intrusion into my personal life by injecting politics into a business relationship. I usually couple this with a demand that they remove my name from all their lists. When I receive responses from businesses, they claim they weren’t being political; they arrogantly and ignorantly believe there is universal agreement that conserving paper helps the environment. Well, if that were true, then what is their purpose in adding it to all their emails?

Tree Glut Causes Humongous Price Drop

 

         In the southeast US timber growing region, there is a veritable glut of trees which has driven prices down 50% to 70% and is causing growers steep losses. The volume of southern yellow pine (used for paper) has quadrupled in recent decades as many farmers replaced cropland with trees. In total, 2.2 million acres were replaced. Prices now are so low that it sometimes isn’t worth the cost to harvest trees. Somehow, this surfeit of trees, decades in the making, has eluded progressive tree huggers.

      Actually, I fully agree with the environmentalists’ admonition to “consider the environment before printing“. However, they (surprise) got it backwards. By all means, you should consider the environment – and then go right ahead and print all you want, the more the better. By printing, you can take great satisfaction in knowing you are doing your part to help the environment and to save our great American forests.

Next on April 28 MLLG begins its new series about the spending crisis;
This is by far our most thorough and analytic presentation of this issue! 

It’s Getting Better All the Time

George Noga
The environment is the best it has been in at least 75 years and is getting better all the time.   
It’s Getting Better All the Time
By: George Noga – April 15, 2018

       We will celebrate Earth Day 2018 on April 22 with a special posting; today’s posting is a prequel. Since Earth Day began in 1970, Americans have been bombarded with ersatz horror stories even though every significant measure of environmental well being is the best it has been and is getting better as well documented in numerous publications including: It’s Better than it Looks, It’s Getting Better All the Time, Enlightenment Now, Progress, Abundance, Rational Optimist and The Moral Arc.

        Following are but a few of the metrics that are doing great: deaths from extreme weather, ambient air quality, emissions per GDP unit, streams suitable for swimming and fishing, oil spills, wastewater treatment, energy use by GDP unit, auto fuel economy, food production, commodity prices, timber growth and use, environmental quality and natural resource abundance. And the list goes on and on.

        Malnutrition in the US (and globally) is at its lowest level in history. Virtually all hunger that remains is due to distribution failures and government corruption – not to lack of food. Obesity in the US, and increasingly worldwide, has supplanted hunger as the more significant problem. Not only do we now feed an astounding 7.6 billion people, we accomplish the feat with a much smaller environmental footprint due mainly to GMOs. This doesn’t stop environmental alarmists from incantations and screeds warning of population growth and demonizing GMOs. Note: The population growth rate already is falling globally and will turn negative by end of the century.

        Despite the epic proliferation of people and the concomitant improvements in their standard of living and consumption, the earth’s minerals and resources are more abundant than ever before – and are getting more abundant all the time. The price of virtually all resources is falling, signalling that we are finding and replacing them faster than we are using them. Remember peak oil? On past Earth Days, scaremongers in science, media and politics warned we would run out of oil by 2000; instead, energy is in worldwide oversupply (really, there is a glut) and prices have plunged.

        Brace yourself for the soporific palaver you will be force fed during the coming week by the Chicken Little triad of media, progressives and environmental wackos. They will regurgitate their imperious, dog-eared shibboleths about greedy corporations spewing carbon, polluting and despoiling the environment. They will rant about frankenfoods, population growth and, of course, their favorite whipping boy (or should it be whipping person?), climate change. But you know the truth, i.e. every metric of environmental well being is the best it has been and is getting better all the time!

      As for us at MLLG, we have written an uber-special Earth Day post to be distributed on Earth Day 2018, which is next Sunday, April 22. Its topic is an environmental issue we never before have written about since these posts began in 2009. It should be a real eye opener; please be sure to read it on Earth Day!

On Earth Day (April 22) we will have something truly provocative for you.

Original Earth Day Predictions Revisited

George Noga

 
Predictions by environmentalists during the first Earth Day in 1970 were not only wrong, they were absurd, inane, preposterous, idiotic and harebrained but, most of all, laughable.
Original Earth Day Predictions Revisited
By: George Noga – May 14, 2017
     The 47th anniversary of Earth Day is a good time to review the accuracy of predictions made by leading environmentalists in 1970. We also take this occasion to proffer five of our own prognostications. We have not cherry-picked the most absurd predictions; there were no upbeat predictions made by any environmentalists on the original Earth Day – or on any Earth Day since. Source note: Acknowledgement is due to the American Enterprise Institute and Mark Perry for some of the data herein.
  1. Harvard biologist George Wald: “Civilization will end within 15 or 20 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.“
  2. Paul Erlich: “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supply we make. Between 1980 and 1989, 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, will perish in the great die-off.“
  3. Denis Hayes, the principal organizer for the original Earth Day, wrote in 1970: “It already is too late to avoid mass starvation.” 
  4. Life Magazine reported: “Scientists have evidence to support that within a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution. By 1985 air pollution will have reduced sunlight reaching Earth by one half.“
  5. Ecologist Kenneth Watt: “By the year 2000 if present trends continue, we will use crude oil at such a rate there won’t be any more crude oil.”
  6. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, writing in Scientific American stated that humanity would totally run out of copper soon after 2000 and that lead, zinc, tin, gold and silver would be gone before 1990.
  7. Dr. Dillon Ripley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute: “In 25 years somewhere between 75% and 80% of all species of living animals will be extinct.”
  8. Ecologist Kenneth Watt once again: “The world has been chilling sharply for about 20 years. If present trends continue, the world will be 11 degrees cooler in 2000.”
  9. Biologist Barry Commoner in the scholarly journal Environment: “We are in an environmental crisis threatening the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
  10. New York Times editorial: “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from possible extinction.“
     Res ipsa loquitur pro se, i.e. the reality speaks for itself; I can’t make this stuff up. As often noted in this space, every single one of the top 100 metrics of human and environmental well-being is better today than in 1970 and is continuing to get better all the time. Environmental wackos never learn; the predictions they are making today are every bit as absurd as those they made on the first Earth Day 47 years ago.
     Not to be outdone, MLLG proffers five surefire environmental predictions.
  1. All the top 100 measures of human and environmental well-being will improve.
  2. Prices (net of inflation) will continue to fall for all metals and natural resources.
  3. The decade of the 2020s will experience global cooling.
  4. Billions of additional well-fed humans will inhabit the planet and everyone will live longer and healthier lives. Earth will continue to get ever more cleaner and richer.
  5. Apocalyptic prophets of environmental doom will continue to spout spectacularly wrong predictions – all of which will be dutifully reported and hyped by the media.
     WARNING: The only skunk at this garden party is government – which really could destroy life on Earth. Our fears and those of our children are misplaced. It is big and feckless government that truly threatens this planet, not pollution or climate change.
The next post May 21st is about the end of America’s 25 year long party.

Your Home As a Microcosm for Environmentalism

George Noga

 
The environmental movement consists of two symbiotic segments. Its leaders are like a watermelon – green on the outside and red on the inside. Its followers guzzle the Kool-Aid and embrace environmentalism with evangelical fervor but are clueless commie pawns.

Your Home As a Microcosm for Environmentalism

By: George Noga – April 30, 2017
       Like most movements of our era, environmentalism began in response to legitimate concerns. People of good will joined together to enact laws to remedy the problems. Moderates then abandoned the movement believing their mission accomplished. Meanwhile, the Berlin Wall fell and communism collapsed. Die-hard Marxists were homeless and hijacked the environmental movement, bringing with them neo-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-globalization agendas which they cloaked in green language.
      Today, the movement is led by watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside) commies and the hard left to whom the environment is merely a lever to achieve their workers’ paradise – they will get it right next time. They are joined by useful idiots, mainly big government types, professors, teachers, movie stars, feel-good progressives and unfortunately, many of our children. Ironically, these are the very same leftists who created an environmental Armageddon in the former Soviet Union and its satellites.
Environmentalism From a Micro Perspective
      Sometimes it helps to look at things differently; assume your home is a metaphor for radical environmentalism. Many years ago, quite frankly, your house was dirty and your family often became ill. You were doing okay financially and wanted to clean it up. You installed a new HVAC system, water filtration and cleaned house more often. Your house was now 90% cleaner than before and family illnesses declined markedly.
      Fast forward several years. You now are affluent and want your home super clean. You have a cleaning crew come once a week and pest control monthly. You buy top-of-the-line air and water filtration systems. You have every surface disinfected. Your budget begins to strain and you must make some compromises about spending. Nevertheless, your home is now 99% cleaner than before, which is great. Right?
      Fast forward again. You now want even more; after all, it’s impossible to be too clean. Right? You bring in the cleaning crew and exterminators daily. Not even one bug survives. You change all filters every day. Your home is now 99.99% cleaner than before. Your costs rose exponentially to achieve infinitesimal incremental benefits. That final 1% cost you $100,000; but it was worth it. Wasn’t it? You must drastically cut spending and you replace your health insurance policy with a much cheaper one.
      Your child falls ill at the neighbor’s, whose home is dirtier – as is the neighborhood. Because of your cheap insurance, you wait to take your child to the doctor; after all, these things usually are not serious. Right? The story has a tragic ending. Yet, despite this tragedy, you want your home 99.9999% cleaner, even if that final one-thousandth of one percent will bankrupt you. After all, your home never can be too clean. Right? Source note: This story was inspired by an internet article by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
 
     This story is a fair representation of environmentalism today. The perfect has become the enemy of the good. Every one of the top 100 measures of environmental and human well-being is better than it was 50 years ago and is getting better all the time. (Source: It’s Getting Better All The Time by Julian Simon and Stephen Moore)
      It is imperative we get this message to our children!
Our next post is on May 6th (Derby Day) and honors the Kentucky Derby.

Understanding the Environmental Religion

George Noga

 
This posting is renewable, biodegradable, conflict-free, green, natural, sustainable, fair traded, non-GMO, pesticide-free, recycled, organic and bio-diverse. Whew!
Understanding the Environmental Religion
By: George Noga – April 22, 2017
     Happy Earth Day 2017! The key to understanding environmentalism is to grasp that it is the religion of progressive urban atheists with eerie parallels to Judaism and Christianity. Its pantheon of gods includes everything listed above in the preheader. There is a Garden of Eden where man once existed in unity with nature. Humans then fell from grace by eating from the tree of knowledge and polluting. We all are energy sinners and judgment day is coming unless we earn salvation through sustainability.Â
     The environmental religion has angels (windmills, bio-fuel) and demons (CO2, coal, pesticides). Its dogma is renewability, biodiversity and green energy. It has its sacraments such as Eucharist consisting of non-GMO organic foods. Its chief ritual is recycling, which acolytes view as a morally redemptive exercise. It persecutes apostates, labeling them deniers and seeks to silence or to imprison them. It is the religion for all the right people with the right beliefs and the right intentions.
The Five Biggest Myths About Recycling
      We can’t deal with environmentalism in just two posts, so we must be selective. This post debunks recycling. Businesses voluntarily and profitably recycle, inter alia, steel, aluminum, tires, copper, batteries, clothing, glass and newsprint. Only when validated by markets does recycling make sense economically or environmentally. Government mandated (coerced) recycling is fatuous. The top five myths follow.
1. Recycling is good for the environment. Much recycled waste goes into the same landfills as all other waste and requires additional trucks, crews and fuel. A true cost/benefit accounting would be devastating for recycling. The Office of Technology Assessment reports recycling changes the nature of pollution – and often for the worse.
2. There is a shortage of landfills. If every U.S. county devoted one square mile to landfills, it would be sufficient for 4,000 years. In the past few years, private companies have opened huge new landfills and costs are plummeting. There are a few areas, limited to the northeast U.S., where landfill capacity is scarce – but that is entirely due to  progressive politics. Those few dysfunctional places are able to ship their garbage economically to locales that aggressively compete for their business.Â
3. Packaging is a problem. Far from being a demon, packaging is a blessing for the environment, resulting in less breakage and waste. Less advanced economies, without modern packaging, generate more waste. Mexico has fewer packaged goods but generates 33% more waste than a comparable U.S. household. McDonald’s produces less than two ounces of waste per customer, less than eating at home. Egad.
4. Paper must be conserved to save forests. This is perhaps the biggest green whopper of all time. Trees are a farmed product grown expressly for paper. To conserve paper to save trees makes no more sense than to conserve cloth to save cotton. Paper is natural, organic, biodegradable, renewable and sustainable. Working forests employ millions, provide clean air and water, wildlife habitat and carbon storage. More trees are planted each year than are consumed and there are more trees today than 100 years ago.Â
5. Plastic is evil. Plastic doesn’t decay – but neither do many other things in a landfill. Plastic is so lightweight, it uses less landfill space and is constantly getting stronger, thinner and lighter. Plastic packaging reduces waste and thereby is eco-friendly. Ersatz environmentalists favor cloth shopping bags manufactured in Asia and teeming with bacteria. They smugly and self righteously shun plastic bags while simultaneously quaffing water from a plastic bottle with over 100 times the weight of a plastic bag.Â
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     Please feel free to print this email and to make copies. In a very real sense, your reluctance to print will discourage commercial tree farming and thereby inexorably hasten the conversion of our forests into parking lots and strip malls. By printing, you can take great satisfaction in knowing that you are doing your part to help the environment and to save our American forests. Thank you for printing.

The next post on April 30th is the final half of our 2017 Earth Day blogging.

Environmentalism’s Siren Song

George Noga

By: George Noga – Updated February 22, 2014

    Nothing matches the environmental movement for effrontery. Everything about it is fraudulent; yet it has captured the hearts, minds and souls of our children. Try explaining to your kids that every measure of human and environmental well-being is better today than at any time in the past 100 years and continues to improve; they will not believe you. And it just isn’t our kids; too many of us buy into environmental myths.

      Everyone supports reasonable laws for clean air, water and energy, biodiversity, saving rain forests and right on down the line. So what’s the difference between us and those who usurp the mantle of environmentalism? There are three main differences: (1) we are for capitalism, free trade and limited government; (2) our beliefs are based on empiricism and science; and (3) we make rational, economic tradeoffs when human well-being is at stake.

The Environmental Movement is Led by Marxists with Other Agendas

   Like most movements of our era, environmentalism began in response to legitimate concerns. All people of good will supported laws to address the concerns. Then things began to diverge. Moderates left the movement believing their mission accomplished. Extremists took over and pushed for more and costlier laws to eke out smaller and more dubious improvements. Then the Berlin Wall fell; communism collapsed; and the most diehard Marxists found themselves homeless. Patrick Moore, a founding member of Greenpeace, stated it well.

   “Following the collapse of world communism . . . many of its members moved into the environmental movement, bringing with them their neo-Marxist, far-left agendas. The environmental movement was hijacked by political activists using green language to cloak agendas more about anti-capitalism and anti-globalization than with science or ecology.”

      Today the environmental movement is run by former Reds and the hard left. They have morphed into Greens for maskirovka but they are like watermelons, i.e. green on the outside and red on the inside. Its acolytes today are limited to big government types, professors, teachers, movie stars, a smattering of unthinking camp followers – and many of our children.

   The ultimate irony is that for a country to improve the environment, it must be wealthy. The only way for nations to become wealthy is via capitalism and free trade. That is why America, Japan and western Europe are able to spend lavishly on the environment. The worst environmental tragedy in human history was the Soviet Union and its satellites. The same leftists who created an environmental Armageddon in the USSR and who advocate a return to its disasterous ideology are the very ones leading the environmental movement in the USA.

Science and Empiricism Versus Failed Political Dogma

     We differ from the extremists in another important respect; our views are based on science and not failed dogma. Following are but a few examples to ponder.

  1. As well documented by economists Julian Simon and Steven Moore in their book It’s getting Better All the Time, the 100 greatest human and environmental trends of the past 100 years are the best they ever have been and continue to improve.
  2. Environmentalists oppose the Keystone Pipeline, US drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico (new wells), ANWR and the Atlantic continental shelf. Yet Cuba, Venezuela and many South American countries, with far worse safety records, drill in the gulf and on the continental shelf. Logically, it would be more eco-friendly for the US to drill.
  3. Extremists push for ever more costly laws to achieve insignificant marginal benefits while ignoring the 800-pound gorillas in the world such as coal mine fires in China and India that create more pollution than all the fuel burned by cars in a year in the USA.
  4. Organic food in scientific taste tests cannot be distinguished from conventionally grown food; it harms the environment as it requires 40% more land for production.
  5. Extremists insist we spend trillions in the years ahead to combat alleged warming and all to lower global temperature by an imperceptible .1 degree Fahrenheit by 2100. The same amount of money could be better spent fighting TB and malaria, ad infinitum.

Conflicts Between the Environment and Human Well-Being

  When inevitable conflicts arise between environmental and human well-being, extremists totally disregard economics and human suffering. There arise situations when harm to the environment is uncertain or minimal while the cost and suffering to humans is astronomical. In such situations, like the snail darter and delta smelt, my calculus favors humans.      

    We are losing our children’s hearts and minds to eco-extremists who seduce them like the Sirens of Greek  mythology. The Sirens were seductresses who lured sailors with enchanting music to shipwreck on the rocky shoals of their island. Today’s environmental Sirens similarly are beguiling our kids with enchanting thoughts but with the same pernicious intent.